IT strategies are often nonexistent or ineffective:
- 74.6% of organizations have an IT strategy process they feel is ineffective.
- IT does not do a good job of communicating its support for business goals; therefore, 23.6% of CXOs still feel that their goals are unsupported by IT.
IT departments that have not developed IT strategies experience alignment, organization, and prioritization issues.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- A CIO has three roles: enable business productivity, run an effective IT shop, and drive technology innovation. Your key initiative plan must reflect these three mandates and how IT strives to fulfill them.
- Don’t project your vision three to five years into the future. Dive deep on next year’s big-ticket items instead.
- Developing an IT strategy is a wasted effort if no mechanisms are put in place to govern the journey.
- If you don’t communicate it, it doesn’t exist; simple, appealing, and inspirational communication is needed.
Impact and Result
- Establish the scope of your IT strategy by defining IT’s mission and vision statements and guiding principles.
- Perform a retrospective of IT’s performance to recognize the current state while highlighting important strategic elements to address going forward.
- Elicit the business context and identify strategic initiatives that are most important to the organization while building a plan to execute on it.
- Evaluate the foundational elements of IT’s operational strategy that will be required to successfully execute on key initiatives.
- Wrap all strategic information into a highly visual and compelling presentation that enables easy customization and executive-facing content.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
9.5/10
Overall Impact
$89,505
Average $ Saved
34
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
City of Scottsdale, Arizona
Workshop
10/10
$685K
60
I want to express my appreciation for the outstanding workshop facilitated by Asia Nebesnaia, our Analyst and Workshop Director and acknowledge the... Read More
Orange County Government
Workshop
9/10
$68,500
120
County of Fairfax
Workshop
10/10
$82,200
10
This process well defined better than prior year. Staff said they that this was far better, and Areez was engaged with team. Totally different expe... Read More
City of Livermore
Workshop
10/10
N/A
20
Curaleaf, Inc.
Workshop
10/10
$41,100
44
CCTS
Guided Implementation
10/10
$50,000
50
So far all good. The analyst was very knowledgeable and cooperative.
Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System
Guided Implementation
10/10
$34,250
20
Manish is exceptionally knowledgeable, professional, and attentive. He comprehends the complexities involved in developing and executing strategic ... Read More
Tohono O’Odham Gaming Enterprise dba Desert Diamond Casinos
Workshop
8/10
$68,500
23
Strides Toronto
Guided Implementation
10/10
$11,500
20
Best services Anubhav provided. Very knowledgeable and knows subject very well. Timely advice.
University Of Alaska
Guided Implementation
10/10
$137K
120
Ben is the best InfoTech analyst I've worked with to date. I appreciate is candor, sense of humor and his expertise. Thanks.
Caribbean Utilities Company , Ltd.
Workshop
10/10
$41,100
10
The Info-Tech team provided valuable knowledge and insight, making the process seamless.
The McKnight Foundation
Workshop
10/10
$30,140
50
The best part was working with Ross and Info-Tech team. Having an expert point of view from people outside of our Organization allowed us to both t... Read More
Alexander T. Augusta Military Medical Center
Workshop
10/10
$12,330
10
The step-by-step guidance through the creation of the product were invaluable to my team and I. Not only the end product as a tool for planning for... Read More
AC Transit
Workshop
10/10
$137K
90
It was one of the best workshops I have attended on the topic of IT Strategy. It was engaging, fruitful, focused, and effective.
City of Atlanta / Atlanta Information Management (AIM)
Workshop
9/10
$685K
32
The best part of the experience was the instructor's ability to facilitate and prioritize everyone's time to ensure the objectives were met. The wo... Read More
Champaign Residential Services Inc
Guided Implementation
10/10
$8,220
5
Thank you for all of your help Ross. You took a very complex process and broke it down into digestible chunks that were easy to understand.
St. Lukes Health System Ltd.
Workshop
9/10
$13,700
10
The overall experience was excellent, and Denis did an outstanding job facilitating and adapting the workshop to our needs.
Town of The Blue Mountains
Guided Implementation
9/10
$30,000
60
Everyone was great, many thanks to Manish and Sharan for being patient with me whenI wasn't able to work on it as much as I had liked.
State of Kansas Human Services
Workshop
10/10
$68,500
110
Western University of Health Sciences
Workshop
10/10
$1.37M
120
The potential impact and return on investment from this engagement is high. Both time and money will be saved as a result of strategic planning, go... Read More
Southern Ute Shared Services
Workshop
9/10
$68,500
10
Best - Customer Feedback; Facilitated discussions; Follow-up data and analysis; Focused time with my management and key individual contributors. ... Read More
Randolph Brooks Federal Credit Union
Workshop
10/10
$2,603
3
Best was Chuck French, he is an excellent facilitator and very knowledgeable with the toolset. Not sure there was a 'bad' portion but I will say t... Read More
Victrex Manufacturing Ltd
Workshop
10/10
$37,620
20
Inmar, Inc.
Workshop
10/10
$102K
16
Unity Homes, Inc
Guided Implementation
10/10
$17,500
20
I didn't have a 'worst' part of the service experience. I absolutely appreciate Ross' time, patience, and mentorship. I have been a leader for many... Read More
CENTREPORT LIMITED
Guided Implementation
10/10
$135K
60
I was really well supported and loved the experience
MSWA
Guided Implementation
10/10
$21,368
10
Multnomah County
Workshop
10/10
$34,250
10
Areez was an excellent facilitator and I received very positive feedback from my management team about his work. Thank you!
City of Arlington
Workshop
10/10
$68,500
10
The workshop afforded our IT team members an opportunity collaborate and establish a renewed focus for our organizational IT Strategy. Our initial ... Read More
Bob Barker Company, Inc.
Guided Implementation
10/10
$13,700
10
Best - Having someone to bounce ideas off of. Worst - Trying to create a 5-year strategy.
IT Strategy
Develop a data-driven, fit-for-purpose plan with a strong link to execution.
This course makes up part of the Strategy & Governance Certificate.
- Course Modules: 7
- Estimated Completion Time: 1.5 hours
- Featured Analysts:
- Kim Osborne Rodriguez, Research Director
Workshop: Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Pre-Workshop: Elicit Business Context
The Purpose
Conduct analysis and facilitate discussions to uncover what business needs mean for IT and how IT plans to support the business.
Key Benefits Achieved
Build an understanding of what business needs mean for IT, the business strategy, and a clear alignment between the two.
Activities
Outputs
Complete recommended diagnostic programs.
- Diagnostic reports (CIO Business Vision, Management & Governance Diagnostic, CEO-CIO Alignment)
Interview key business stakeholders, as needed, to identify business context: business goals, initiatives, and the organization’s mission and vision.
- IT Strategy Workbook – Business Context
(Optional) CIO to compile and prioritize IT success stories.
Module 2: Establish the Scope of Your IT Strategy
The Purpose
Define statements, principles, and goals to establish the scope of your IT strategy and assess IT’s past performance.
Key Benefits Achieved
Identify and document the scope of your IT strategy and the successes from IT’s past performance (business value realized, key milestones and successful projects, etc.).
Activities
Outputs
Review/validate the business context.
Construct your mission and vision statements.
Elicit your guiding principles and finalize IT strategy scope.
- IT strategy scope (IT mission, vision, and guiding principles).
Module 3: Build Your Key Initiative Plan
The Purpose
Identify high-priority key initiatives to support the business, enable IT excellence, and drive technology innovation.
Key Benefits Achieved
Build your key initiative plan along with your goals cascade visual to clearly communicate business alignment back to your key initiatives.
Activities
Outputs
Identify key IT initiatives that support the business.
Identify key IT initiatives that enable operational excellence.
Identify key IT initiatives that drive technology innovation.
Consolidate and prioritize (where needed) your IT initiatives.
- List of key IT initiatives
Module 4: Build Your Key Initiative Plan (Continued)
The Purpose
Identify high-priority key initiatives to support the business, enable IT excellence, and drive technology innovation.
Key Benefits Achieved
Build your key initiative plan along with your goals cascade visual to clearly communicate business alignment back to your key initiatives.
Activities
Outputs
Determine IT goals.
Complete goals cascade
- Goals cascade
Build your IT strategy roadmap.
- Roadmap (Gantt chart)
Module 5: Define Your Operational Strategy
The Purpose
Evaluate the key components on an operational strategy that will help your team execute on your key strategic initiatives.
Key Benefits Achieved
Build a strong operational strategy to ensure IT can deliver what they promise and put in place the mechanisms to govern your journey.
Activities
Outputs
Identify metrics and targets per IT goal.
- IT metrics and targets
(Optional) Identify required skills and resource capacity.
- IT resourcing changes
Discuss next steps and wrap-up.
- Next steps and strategy refresh schedule
Module 6: Document Strategy
The Purpose
Complete your strategy by building a highly visual and compelling presentation that enables easy customization and executive-facing content.
Key Benefits Achieved
Simple, appealing, and inspirational communication of your strategy to all key stakeholders is a must to ensure IT’s success.
Activities
Outputs
Complete in-progress deliverables.
- IT strategy presentation
(Optional) Set up review time for workshop deliverables.
Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy
Success depends on IT initiatives clearly aligned to business goals, IT excellence, and driving technology innovation.
Executive Summary
IT strategies are often nonexistent or ineffective.
- According to the Management and Governance diagnostic (MGD), 74.6% of organizations have an IT strategy process they feel is ineffective (Info-Tech, Management and Governance Diagnostic; n=1,931).
- IT does not do a good job of communicating their support for business goals, therefore, 23.6% of CXOs still feel that their goals are unsupported by IT (Info-Tech, CEO-CIO Alignment Diagnostic; n=863).
IT departments that have not developed IT strategies experience alignment, organization, and prioritization issues.
Three-quarters of surveyed CEOs value tech leaders with experience fostering operational stability and strategic business alignment (CIO Journal, 2020), however…
- The CIO is seen as an order taker by business executives. This usually results in the demands on IT far outstripping the IT budget.
- Projects and initiatives are not prioritized around business objectives. Synergies and dependencies are recognized too late. Projects are often late or put on hold because of sudden changes to business requirements.
Follow Info-Tech’s approach to developing a strong IT strategy.
- Use Info-Tech’s industry-focused approach to discern the business context.
- Clearly communicate to business executives how IT will support the organization’s key objectives and initiatives using the Strategy Presentation Template.
- Use Info-Tech’s Prioritization Tool to help make project decisions in a holistic manner that allows for the selection of the most-valuable initiatives to become part of the IT strategic roadmap.
Info-Tech Insight
A CIO has three roles: enable business productivity, run an effective IT shop, and drive technology innovation. Your IT strategy must reflect these three mandates and how IT strives to fulfill them.
Info-Tech’s approach
1. Establish the Scope of Your IT Strategy
Establish the scope of your IT strategy by defining IT’s mission and vision statements and guiding principles.
2. Review IT Performance From Last Fiscal Year
A retrospective of IT’s performance helps recognize the current state while highlighting important strategic elements to address going forward.
3. Build Your Key Initiative Plan
Elicit the business context and identify strategic initiatives that are most important to the organization and build a plan to execute on them.
4. Define IT’s Operational Strategy
Evaluate the foundational elements of IT’s operational strategy that will be required to successfully execute on key initiatives.
Info-Tech’s methodology for IT Strategy
01 Business Context | 02 Key Initiative Plan | 03 Operational Strategy | 04 Executive Presentation | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Inputs |
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Outputs |
Business Context Information for Step 2:
|
IT Strategy Information for Approval:
|
Operational Strategy Information for Step 4:
|
Executive Presentations for:
|
Service |
Pre-Workshop Industry-Specific Guided Implementation |
IT Strategy Workshop |
IT Strategy Workshop |
IT Strategy Workshop |
Info-Tech’s methodology for IT Strategy
Blueprint deliverables
The IT Strategy Workbook supports each step of this blueprint to help you accomplish your goals:
Goals Cascade Visual
Elicit business context and use the workbook to build your custom goals cascade.
Initiative Prioritization
Use the weighted scorecard approach to evaluate and prioritize your strategic initiatives.
Roadmap/Gantt Chart
Populate your Gantt chart to visually represent your key initiative plan over the next 12 months.
Key deliverable:
IT Strategy Presentation Template
A highly visual and compelling presentation template that enables easy customization and executive-facing content.
Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs
DIY Toolkit
"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful"
Guided Implementation
"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."
Workshop
"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."
Consulting
"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."
Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.
Guided Implementation
What does a typical GI on this topic look like?
A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.
A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 2 to 4 months.
Workshop Overview
Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889
Session 0 (Pre-Workshop) | Session 1 | Session 2 | Session 3 | Session 4 | Session 5 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Elicit Business Context | Establish Scope and Review IT Performance | Build Your Key Initiative Plan | Build Your Key Initiative Plan | Define Your Operational Strategy | Next Steps and Wrap-Up | |
Activities |
0.1 Identify business context and business goals. 0.2 Customize your organization’s capability map. 0.3 (Optional) Compile and prioritize IT success stories. |
1.1 Create the IT vision statement and IT mission statement, and identify IT guiding principles. 1.2 Define the IT strategy scope. 1.3 Determine business value realized from the last fiscal year. 1.4 Evaluate diagnostic data and evaluate IT performance. |
2.1 Determine goals cascade from business goals to IT goals:
|
3.1 Prioritize your IT initiatives. 3.2 Build your roadmap. 3.3 Develop business-focused sunshine diagram. |
4.1 Identify metrics and targets per IT goal. 4.2 Establish stakeholder communication approach. 4.3 Identify organizational changes required. 4.4 Identify key IT budget elements. |
5.1 Discuss next steps and wrap-up. 5.2 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days. 5.3 Set up review time for workshop deliverables. |
Outcomes |
|
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Workshop Requirements
Launch Diagnostics | Business Inputs | IT Inputs |
---|---|---|
Launch the CIO Business Vision diagnostic. Launch the CEO-CIO Alignment diagnostic. Launch the Management and Governance diagnostic. Gather all historical diagnostic reports (if they exist). Contact your Account Manager to get started. |
Gather business strategy documents and find information on:
(If this doesn’t exist for your organization, contact your Info-Tech Account Manager to get started.) Interview the following stakeholders to uncover business context information:
Download the Business Context Discovery Tool |
Gather information on last fiscal year’s strategy. Particularly information on:
|
Phase 1
Establish Scope of Your IT Strategy
This phase will walk you through the following activities:
- How to build IT mission and vision statements
- How to elicit IT guiding principles
- How to finalize and communicate your IT strategy scope
This phase involves the following participants:
- CIO
- Senior IT Team
To complete this phase, you will need:
IT Strategy Presentation Template
Use the IT Strategy Presentation Template to document the results from the following activities:
- Mission and Vision Statements
- IT Guiding Principles
IT must aim to support the organization’s mission and vision
A mission statement:
- Focuses on today and what an organization does to achieve it.
- Drives the company.
- Answers: What do we do? Whom do we serve? How do we service them?
"A mission statement focuses on the purpose of the brand; the vision statement looks to the fulfillment of that purpose."
A vision statement:
- Focuses on tomorrow and what an organization ultimately wants to become.
- Gives the company direction.
- Answers: What problems are we solving? Who and what are we changing?
"A vision statement provides a concrete way for stakeholders, especially employees, to understand the meaning and purpose of your business. However, unlike a mission statement – which describes the who, what, and why of your business – a vision statement describes the desired long-term results of your company's efforts."
Source: Business News Daily, 2020
Characteristics of a mission & vision statement
A strong mission statement has the following characteristics:
- Articulates the IT function’s purpose and reason for existence
- Describes what the IT function does to achieve its vision
- Defines the customers of the IT function
- Is:
- Compelling
- Easy to grasp
- Sharply focused
- Concise
A strong vision statement has the following characteristics:
- Describes a desired future achievement
- Focuses on ends, not means
- Communicates promise
- Is:
- Concise; no unnecessary words
- Compelling
- Achievable
- Measurable
Derive the IT mission and vision statements from the business’
Begin the process by identifying and locating the business mission and vision statements.
Ensure there is alignment between the business and IT statements.
Note: Mission statements may remain the same unless the IT department’s mandate is changing.
1.1 Construct mission and vision statements
Objective: Help teams define their purpose (why they exist) to build a mission statement (if one doesn't already exist).
30 minutes
Step 1:
- Gather the IT strategy creation team and revisit your business context inputs, specifically the corporate mission statement.
- Begin by asking the participants:
- What is our job as a team?
- What’s our goal? How do we align IT to our corporate mission?
- What benefit are we bringing to the company and the world?
Ask them to share general thoughts in a check-in.
Step 2:
- Share some examples of IT mission statements.
- Example: IT provides innovative product solutions and leadership that drives growth and success.
- Provide each participant with some time to write their own version of an IT mission statement.
Step 3:
- This step involves reviewing individual mission statements, combining them, and building one collective mission statement for the team.
- Consider the following approach to build a unified mission statement:
- Use the 20x20 rule for group decision making. Give the group no more than 20 minutes to craft a collective team purpose with no more than 20 words.
- As a facilitator, provide guidelines on how to write for the intended audience. Business stakeholders need business language.
- Refer back to the corporate mission statement periodically and ensure there is alignment.
- Document your final mission statement in your IT Strategy Presentation Template.
1.1 Construct mission and vision statements (cont.)
Objective: Help teams define their ideal culture (how they work together to achieve their purpose) to a vision statement.
60 minutes
Step 4:
- Gather the IT strategy creation team and revisit your business context inputs, specifically the corporate vision statement.
- Share one or more examples of vision statements.
- Provide participants with sticky notes and writing materials, and ask them to work individually for this step.
- Ask participants to brainstorm using the following questions:
- What is the desired future state of the IT organization?
- How should we work to attain the desired state?
- How do we want IT to be perceived in the desired state?
- Provide participants with guidelines to build descriptive, compelling, and achievable statements regarding their desired future state.
- Regroup as a team and review participant answers.
Step 5:
- Ask the team to post their notes on the wall.
- Have the team group the words that have a similar meaning or feeling behind them – these will create themes.
- When the group is done categorizing the statements into themes, ask if there's anything missing. Did they ensure alignment to the corporate vision statement? Are there any elements missing when considering alignment back to the corporate vision statement?
Step 6:
- Consider each category as a component of your vision statement.
- Review each category with participants; define what the behavior looks like when it is being met and what it looks like when it isn’t.
- As a facilitator, provide guidelines on word-smithing and finessing the language.
- Refer back to the corporate vision statement periodically and ensure there is alignment.
- Document your final mission statement in your IT Strategy Presentation Template.
Source: Hyper Island Toolbox
Tips for Online Facilitation
Pick an online whiteboard tool that allows participants to use a large, zoomable canvas. Set up each topic at a different area of the board; spread them out just like you would do it on the walls of a room. Invite participants to zoom in and visit each section and add their ideas as sticky notes once you reach that section of the exercise. If you’re not using an online whiteboard, we’d recommend using a collaboration tool such as Google Docs to collect the information for each step under a separate heading. Invite everyone into the document but be very clear in regard to editing rights. Pre-create your screen deck and screen share this with your participants through your videoconferencing software. We’d also recommend sharing this so participants can go through the deck again during the reflection steps. When facilitating group discussion, we’d recommend that participants use non-verbal means to indicate they’d like to speak. You can use tools like Teams’ “raise hand” tool, a reaction emoji, or just have people put their hands up. The facilitator can then invite that person to talk.
Input
- Business mission statement
- Business vision statement
Output
- IT mission statement
- IT vision statement
Materials
- Screen
- Projector
- Sticky notes
- Markers
- Whiteboard
- Paper
- Collaboration/brainstorming tool (whiteboard, flip chart, digital equivalent)
Participants
- CIO
- Senior IT Team
Download the IT Strategy Presentation Template and document your mission and vision statements in section 1.
IT mission statements demonstrate the IT function’s purpose
The IT mission statement specifies the function’s purpose or reason for being. The mission should guide each day’s activities and decisions. The mission statements use simple and concise terminology and speak loudly and clearly, generating enthusiasm for the organization.
Strong IT mission statements have the following characteristics:
- Articulates the IT function’s purpose and reason for existence
- Describes what the IT function does to achieve its vision
- Defines the customers of the IT function
- Is:
- Compelling
- Easy to grasp
- Sharply focused
- Inspirational
- Memorable
- Concise
Sample IT Mission Statements:
- To provide infrastructure, support, and innovation in the delivery of secure, enterprise-grade information technology products and services that enable and empower the workforce at [Company Name].
- To help fulfil organizational goals, the IT department is committed to empowering business stakeholders with technology and services that facilitate effective processes, collaboration, and communication.
- The mission of the information technology (IT) department is to build a solid, comprehensive technology infrastructure; to maintain an efficient, effective operations environment; and to deliver high-quality, timely services that support the business goals and objectives of ABC Inc.
- The IT department has operational, strategic, and fiscal responsibility for the innovation, implementation, and advancement of technology at ABC Inc. in three main areas: network administration and end-user support, instructional services, and information systems. The IT department provides leadership in long-range planning, implementation, and maintenance of information technology across the organization.
- The IT group is customer-centered and driven by its commitment to management and staff. It oversees services in computing, telecommunications, networking, administrative computing, and technology training.